January 28, 2026 • 63 mins
In part 2 with podcaster & writer Jonathan Hirsch (creator of podcasts like Dear Franklin Jones), Lola & Meagan discuss life in the cult of Franklin Jones, aka Adi Da. They discuss the dramatic meditation rituals in the group, what it felt like to get blessed by the leader, and how different members saw some of the same things that had happened completely differently, depending on whether they still believed in him later or not.
They discuss the lawsuits and allegations against Jones and how the cult panic of the time impacted the way his followers saw them, the importance of being able to admit when you’re wrong, and how ultimately Jonathan left.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Trust me. Do you trust her?
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Right ever lead you astray?
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Trust? This is the truth, the only truth.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
If anybody ever tells you to just trust them, don't hello.
We record these episodes in advance, so I'm just going
to add a quick insert here because if you're listening
in America, the mood in our nation is heavy this week,
and it doesn't feel right to not address it. Alex Preddie,
an American citizen and an ICU nurse who was holding
his phone to film and not brandishing the gun he
was legally carrying on him, was killed by immigration officers
(00:31):
in Minneapolis while on the ground, just a couple of
weeks after Renee Good was killed by ice when driving away.
Her killer can be heard on video calling her a
fucking bitch after he shot her to death. Both of
these people were there to observe, as is their legal right,
to protect their communities from the escalating violence of federal
agents in our country, who Trump claims are there to
protect Americans who feels safer. The Trump administrations rush to
(00:55):
characterize the victims of these extra judicial killings as deserving terrorists,
despite video evidence clearly showing that they pose no threat.
Should alum us all, don't listen to your eyes and ears.
Listen to what I say, not what you see. For
those who haven't been following immigration policy in the US
and maybe don't understand what all the fuss is about.
I know a lot of people think that people on
(01:17):
the letter just being hysterical, which of course sometimes we are.
In May of last year, Steven Miller, White House senior
Advisor and DHS Secretary Christino, both of whom are openly
anti immigrant. Stephen Miller has made an entire career of
fear mongering about how immigrants are going to destroy white culture.
They ordered ICE to stop focusing on people with criminal
records and just try to reach a goal of three
(01:37):
thousand arrests per day so they could rest as many
people as possible. There's been a nearly six hundred percent
increase in average daily arrests since Trump's twenty twenty five inauguration,
so that means people with no criminal record are being
stopped in public spaces, more people are being racially profiled,
and now, even though we're spending billions of dollars on this,
nearly seventy five percent of people detained by ICE have
(01:59):
no criminal cons I've said this before, I will say
it again. Undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate
than people who were born in America. They also pay
taxes and di services they don't get access to. So
what is it really about in a country that purports
to be free when an armed force of federal officers
is being instructed to not only meet a quota of
arrests rooted in nothing but ideology, and not only being
(02:22):
instructed to deport people who opposed Trump's policies, as we
saw with pro Palestine protesters, but also they are now
using force against protesters who are simply legally observing, and
that force is lethal. We should all be alarmed because
that is not what free countries do. That is what
authoritarian countries do. As always, I encourage everybody to call
(02:43):
your representatives and tell them to do something and not
just make an angry tweet. All right, That's the end
of my carry on with colts. Welcome to Trust Me,
the podcast about cults and extreme belief and manipulation from.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Two cult kids in fact experience Instead. I'm Lowl Blanc
and I'm Megan Elizabeth. This week is Part two with
Jonathan Hirsch, podcaster, producer, and author who grew up in
the cult of New Age guru Franklin Jones, commonly known
as Addie daw. Last week we learned about the leader
and how Jonathan's parents joined the group, and this week
he's going to tell us about the group's theatrical weekly meditations,
(03:20):
what it was like getting blessed by Franklin Jones, and
how different members saw some of the same things that
had happened completely differently depending on whether they still believed
in him later or not.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
It's so interesting.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
We'll talk about the lawsuits and allegations against John's how
the cult panic of the time impacted the way his
followers saw it, how Jonathan left himself, and the importance
of being able to admit when you're wrong. Our favorite,
our favorite thing that's so easy and fun to do.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
It's so fun. I love it.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Same before we jump in with our fabulous guest, Jonathan Megan,
kindly tell me your cultiest thing.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
This week, a new docuseries was released on HBO. It's
called Andrea Yates The Cult Behind the Killer. A lot
of people will probably remember Andrea Yates from the early
two thousands. She killed five of her children and she
was on the cover of every magazine, every newspaper, a
very salacious story, but we never really got a clear
behind the scene picture of what was actually going on
(04:26):
with Andrea and our second interview ever on this podcast,
the Trust Me Podcast, was with Moses Storm, who was
in this documentary. He was in this cult and I
would love for people to go listen to the episode.
I myself have not watched this docuseries yet on HBO.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
It's very heavy.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
I'm going to I'm planning on it, but it's something
you gotta be really ready for. It's the worst case
scenario of what can happen in these dynamics that we
talk about all the time.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Yeah, I really have to limit my my doc intake
when it comes to topics like this because it's it
is just really, really tough to watch. But Moses does
a really amazing job in our interview with him of
finding that balance between like talking about what happened, and
also he's a comedian and he's like so fucking funny,
(05:18):
so he of course peppers it with with his unique
blend of humor.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Yeah, he has He has an HBO comedy special called
Trash White that's one of the funniest things I've ever
seen in my life. Only he could hold this story
with the grace that makes it one of my favorite
episodes we've ever done, while also being one of the
scariest totally topics we've ever covered. So I will be
(05:45):
watching the documentary this week are the docuseries what have you?
But you know, I'm gonna make sure that I, like,
I have a copy of Friends the next day or
something planned, because it's just.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah, yeah, that's your cultiest thing.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
I saw a commercial for a company which I will
not name, but a company that is a network of
psychics okay, And the language that they used was astonishing
to me because it literally is like spelling out very
(06:24):
explicitly what we say so often, you know, is one
of the strong motivations for joining occult, which is the
need for certainty. And the line is literally, thankfully, with
the help of our insightful guidance, you can clear away
the doubt and experience the joy of certainty.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
They're not even hiding that what.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
They're selling is this thing that is truly impossible to provide.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
I just was like, this is crazy.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
But it's also such a smart marketing tactic because there
is so much happening in the world right now. There's
so much uncertainty, so much turbulence and turmoil, and we're
all freaking out. And you know, I think it's something
we're all craving so much. And it's like this company
is like, just talk to one of our psychics specialists
(07:22):
and we'll give you everything you need. And I'm like,
this is such bullshit.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
And yeah, I mean, you can know it's bullshit and
still do it. I have a friend who has become
addicted to TikTok fortune or card readers, and she's like,
I know it's stupid. I want to stop, but it's
almost become like a tic.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Oh interesting.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
I mean, we've talked about having Bob Niguard on again soon.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
I'm going to text him.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
For those who have not heard the Bob Niguard episode,
he is like a psychic buster. He is like a
private investigator who finds self proclaimed psychics who are basically
just taking people's entire life savings and dangling this like, oh,
but I need a little more money if you want
this answer.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
We need a little more money if you want you know,
and it's a crime.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Yeah, but he like gathers everything and then gets them
busted and it's so cool, and you know, whatever y'all believe.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
I think we.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Can all agree that taking people's life savings is wrong, yes,
and taking advantage of people in vulnerable moments in their
lives is wrong.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Agree.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Yeah, And that is what this network is not even
hiding that they're trying to do.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Oh my god, well give me the number. So anyway,
that's that. Well, shall we talk to Jonathan?
Speaker 2 (08:50):
We shall?
Speaker 3 (09:03):
I did want to ask you about that conflict that
you must have felt.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
So you're a kid, do you believe in it?
Speaker 3 (09:09):
First of all, before this moment with your father where
he's like, should I get off the pot or whatever?
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah, I mean no, I think I wasn't being necessarily
asked to believe it. But it was like in the periphery,
you know, I think we would go to the Sunday
events or whatever they called them, Guruvara, which was like
grew day day, Yeah, Sunday, And on the day when everybody,
you know, in the wider Christian world is resting, we
(09:38):
are worshiping the Guru. He's probably resting somewhere. He is
technically resting now, yes, yeah, yeah, we're not, We're not,
We're never resting. But I didn't wholeheartedly believe it, nor
was there sort of like an imposition on me to
(09:59):
believe it. But yes, after a while I wanted to
believe it. And I think one of the things that
I've talked a lot about and that I struggled with
as a teenager was reconciling my desire to believe it
the experiences that you know, manipulated or not, which you know,
(10:20):
when you went to these public sittings, these meditations with Jones,
they were highly orchestrated. They were very theatrical the way
they were put together, with the music and the lights,
and you had to wait in line, you know, to
go and give him a flower and put it at
his feet, and then he looked at you with those eyes.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Oh wow, And that.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Was supposed to be the blessing. So that whole experience
you can perceive as something different than what it is.
And it was very difficult for me, even as a
young adult to write about that, and it confessed that
and I talk about that in the series, just how
I couldn't quite make sense of what had happened that day.
The first time I sat in one of these things
(10:59):
because it was Yeah, it was very orchestrated. As the
best way I can I can discribe what did that
feel like for you? It felt like you have so
much anticipation about this moment. Your parents are telling you
he's this powerful person. You're hearing people scream and shout
his name and they're like chanting. All these chants are
(11:22):
basically like South Indian traditional chants that are like translated
into Jones speaks, so like his name isn't it instead
of Shiva or Vishnu? And you spend hours, at least
the first time I spent hours in this environment where
you're like changing Its good.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I mean that sounds like a rave or something.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Yeah, without the drugs.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah, they're like in a new new reality.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Of course, that's going to create it's a heightened sensory experience,
and it's prolonged, and it's among other people, like regardless
of who's doing it or what the context is, like,
that's gonna that's going to be very likely to create
a peak experience.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Exactly, and you're sort of building up to it. I'm
building my whole life up into this room. And it's loud,
it's cold, outside. We're outside, we're literally at this massive
gate in front of his house, and then you kind
of go in one by one and everybody goes in
and you finally get to the front of the line.
It's like that you know, new restaurant that you want
to try, and you're just like, yeah, literally you open
(12:22):
the door and they're supposedly Infinity right right, right, Okay,
I gotta try that. So so you know, you get
in the room and there's also I remember the whoosh
of like warm air, like I had just been in
the cold for hours anticipating this moment, and you're in
(12:42):
this like little entryway. He's an excellent producer. That is
a very good way of putting it. Like the show
is for you for approximately three to five seconds, but
you will wait hours for it.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Whoa.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
And so you get there, you get to the front
and he's on this raised dais hence the cardboard cutout
of him sitting. He's like sitting on this massive chair.
You're like, I've seen that before. Yeah, got it. That
explains a lot all the awkward dinner parties at my house. Yeah,
(13:18):
we actually never had dinner parties at our house. But
it's funny to think of the idea of everybody showing
up and they're just being there Frank, yeah, in the corner.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
So you were just like sitting there with this three
to five seconds beyond the vibe.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
You have a flower and you put it at his
feet and you bow and then you look up and
he looks you in the eyes and that's it. Boom,
that's the moment you've been waiting for.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
And he doesn't say anything, doesn't say so sweet, you're
looking at us in the eyes, and it's.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Yes, yeah, sorry, I should know better as a producer,
explain what I'm doing.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
And out of context, that might not have been anything.
But you've been this whole thing has been built up
for you your entire life. An eye contact always feels
a little bit intimate, direct eye contact right, like very uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Sometimes as they all looking with each other's eyes.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
I know, now I can't start.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
That brings me to something that happened earlier, and we
can just touch on it quickly. But there was, you know,
a sex party going on and somebody got.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Burned with a cigarette.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
Yes, so there's two different complete stories about this.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
One is like normal and one is heightened.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
Yes, So basically, a woman gets burned with a cigarette
during an orgy. Yes, some people believe that they saw
him touch her and like fire exploded and she became
one with him for a second.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
And was healed. There was something something healed, And.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Then other people were like, he burned her with a cigarette.
And it's just so interesting how when you are in
these heightened states, somebody can be like he sat there
and looked at you for two seconds, and you can
be experiencing somebody touching you with fire and being healed.
It's like all narrative somehow.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
It is, and it just the poetry that imbued Jones's philosophy,
and if it hit right for you, his followers, it's
indistinguishable from your own sort of personal private machinations about
the variability of the of the experience itself. So if
(15:29):
you want to believe it, in other words, you will.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Believe it and you will feel it.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Yeah. I remember there were these tapes of these flute
scored readings of his that I remember listening to when
I was a kid, and it was like followers who
were reading them, and in one of them and like
even as you're saying that, I'm like thinking, like how
do I explain what you felt inside? There was like
literal childhood tapes, and in one of them, very specifically,
(15:54):
it says, this is Jones's words describing himself basically in
the way people should see him in. This is in
the early days. It became far more complicated later. Anyways,
he says, he smiles at you. You notice him. Everything
has already died. This is the other world.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Whoa.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
And that's like the pacing at which it's read. So
you're just like you got going on. It's just really
vibing you a certain demo.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
I mean, even just hearing you say that, I was like, yeah, yeah,
take me there.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
You notice him, everything has already died. So you just
have this sense that like he is everywhere and always
with you, and you're building a narrative as a community
around this beautiful world in which you sort of go
to the other side. Yeah, and he's waiting there for you.
He knows it and you do not, And everything miraculous
(16:53):
in the world comes from him.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Do you think he knew he was full of shit?
Speaker 1 (16:59):
I have thoughts about that. I think, like many of
these gurus and teachers, where things get sort of where
they become increasingly more important within their own cosmology over time.
I do wonder sometimes if he saw what his followers
(17:21):
wanted from him and just kept doubling down on it, how.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
Far do you think it could have gone? Because I
imagine Jonestown is happening around this time. His name happens
to be Jones, he has an island. I'm assuming a
lot of parallels were drawn after news.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Yeah, after the Jonestown massacre, people literally went up to
Franklin Jones's compound in northern California and through tomatoes.
Speaker 4 (17:46):
At the door or whatever that was just in like
ancient kingdoms.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yea, they actually got tomato.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Wow, Okay, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
That's the story that was told. No tomatoes were documented.
You were in a place that I could have known.
I don't know if they were rotten tomatoes or real tomatoes,
fresh tomatoes. No actual primary stop for y'all they were.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Can you explain a little bit what the actual lawsuits
were and what the allegations were about.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Yeah, So there were the allegations were that Jones was
manipulating people into doing things that would harm themselves, including
like uncoupling from their own partner and demanding that they
sort of like bend to his will, which included like
(18:50):
sex acts and things like that. The allegations themselves never
went to any kind of trial, so they were settled
out of court as we know, but that that information
was never made public records, so he ultimately denied any
claims that he used coercive tactics or manipulation, that he
(19:12):
was assaulting people sexually or otherwise, though those claims are
expressed by people in the podcast and certainly were in
the public forum.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
Well, Tanya, who we mentioned earlier, is on the podcast
talking about a couple of instances, one in which there
was a part a naked party where she was told
she had to shave everyone's pubes. There's one evening in
which he announced he wanted to sleep with as many
women as he can and had them all cycle into
his room. And mind you, this is literally like God,
(19:46):
So you what are you going to not do it?
Speaker 2 (19:47):
If God wants this from you?
Speaker 3 (19:49):
And Tanya, although she had a partner who she loved,
was one of the women who was told to do this,
So I mean there are first hand accounts of these
things happening. Yes, they just happened to not go to
court for it, right.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
That is correct, and I think people who remain followers
would likely continue to deny that those experiences were what
people like Tanya made them out to be, which I
think is itself so interesting that there are people who
believe so deeply in the spiritual primacy of Jones that
(20:30):
these experiences that were very clearly detailed as abuse would
be seen either as both alternately misconstrued or an opportunity
for some kind of spiritual gift that was not right,
not appreciated.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Right. Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Before you came here, we were watching some stuff on
YouTube and we saw a follower who was a woman
who basically on like a year ago, accused some of
the people who came forward with allegations of just being
after money.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Starting the state.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Yeah, which is yeah, fascinating that after all this time,
and I assume it's a decent number of people who
had things to say about what happened to them, many.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Many people who did not go on the record, many
people who I've met over the years who have reached
out to me privately after the show came out, even
you know who, I think, you know, just a testament
to the power of storytelling to just having the word
out there does become for some people a baseline of
(21:40):
understanding that makes them feel like they've been heard. And
I was grateful for those kinds of messages because it
made me feel like despite the fact that many of
these people I grew up with, none of whom I'm
really in contact with anymore, in large part because of
what was said on the Post podcast, even though I
(22:01):
think I we were talking about this earlier, but I
went to great lengths to try to be understanding of
why people would have joined Jones's group, of maybe even
why Jones thought that what he was doing was right
or whatever, trying to trying to think about these things
in the best possible light and still struggling but trying to.
(22:24):
I think it would probably have made the series differently today,
but it was a different person then. None of those
people that I knew who I grew up with in
the group could really understand or appreciate that, because to
them this was a divine being. Jones was not Franklin Jones.
He was Adi Dah somraj. He was a physical incarnation
(22:50):
of God come down into a human form to save
everybody from the dark times what they called the Coali Yuga.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Dark times, so that was the next start of time.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
It's a very long dark time. You know, they gave
themselves a super long window for that sort of joking.
It is sort of part of like, you know, some
religious ideas about eras of times.
Speaker 4 (23:13):
You guys, interesting, the age of Aquarius is like supposed
to be the new light age, right, yeah, it's it's something.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
It's it's like that, and you know, so not to
denigrate big world religion in in sort of suggesting that
that itself is not a night but the way I
think it was sort of used within the group was
as this kind of indicator of the dangers and there's
the world.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
There's so many really smart people in the group.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
And I think one of our one of the things
that we always like ticket across is that stupid people
are not who joins these groups. And I could see
somebody listening who's very smart, who's still in it, being like,
these people do not get it. They're not listening, they're
not they don't understand. It's not clacking for them. What
did Justin Bieber say, it's not clocking for you, but
like they're just projecting their own intelligence onto his teachings,
(24:07):
so like they might be believing something very smart and cool.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
But like, yeah, but to use another justin bieber frase,
I'm going to stand on my business.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Here, standing on business.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
And say that you can define words out of existence
until they mean nothing. And I think that is to
me the crux of what that thinking, when it becomes
cult like, starts to engender in some people that I
have met with in this group and other groups, who
are so sure that the vision of reality that they've
(24:43):
been sold is too beautiful and glorious to let go of.
They will try to iron out all of the nuance
and split all the hair into it makes.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Sense, yeah, because it's not an intellectual thing. It's an
emotional thing.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Yes, If we are going through life and we're on
the things, and then someone introduces us to a teaching
in a way that's giving us a peak experience that
gives us relief from that and this feeling of transcendence
and connection to all beings, like, of course we're going
to want to go towards that, and then we're going
to find ways to intellectualize why it's logical and why
it makes sense. But at the core underneath we are
(25:17):
emotional creatures and that's how we make our decisions.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
And you know, I was talking to Joe Simhart a
little while ago, who your listeners may know, was like
this kind of well known exit counselor d programmer involved
in a lot of these groups, like getting in the
weeds with some of these cult groups in the eighties.
And he's of the mind and not just paraphrasing him,
(25:41):
so I don't want to directly quote him. Says he's
not here to speak to it. But what the impression
I got from a conversation we had was, you know,
some of the people who join these groups are some
of the most intelligent people because they're able to sort
of bend to the possibility that be open minded, able
to sort of like critically imagine a world where this
(26:01):
might be true. How do what do we know? Jones
is saying that there's like you know, and some of
these talks that we'd hear in a reality you cannot see,
and the core of that reality is your own illusion
that you were not a part of it. And you're like,
maybe he's right, And how could I prove that he's not?
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Yeah, I mean it.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
Requires some cognitive flexibility and then the cults shut down
that flexibility and make it rigid.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
But that's like what brings us in, right, And that's
and that's a great point, Like how do I know
if it's true?
Speaker 1 (26:33):
I don't.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
He kind of even towards the end, really started playing
on that, like, you guys are not enlightened, and it's
not like you can be like, yeah, I am, because.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Only he knows.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
How am I not myself?
Speaker 4 (26:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (26:45):
You know, so when your parents joined and then when
you were growing up, like how did they and you
kind of square reconcile this history of these allegations and
him being in the news, you know, as this dangerous figure.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Like they had different responses when I've asked them about that.
I think they alternately felt like the media and the
news was sensational. And you know, by the mid to
late eighties, there was quite a bit of controversy around
cult groups. This is after Jonestown, people who are anti
(27:23):
cult advocates, exit counselors, people like Rick Ross or appearent
Rick Allen. Ross's like we're appearing on you know, daytime
TV shows and talking about some of these groups literally
on you know, Oprah Oprah forty eight hours, like news
programs like deprogramming people. There was quite a bit of
concern about groups that Jones was sort of lumped into.
(27:48):
I think they perceived all of that as just like
a panic, yeah, judgment masquerading as concern.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
From your perspective, now, do you think that this group
had a Jones sound potential.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
I think any high control group does. I really think
that it is possible. And you know, there were people
who were really on the margins who could have done
bad things to themselves or to others, And in my knowledge,
there were no murders or serious like you know, people
(28:24):
committing suicide or anything like that. In relationship to Jones's
group we talk about, you know, when I started to
dig deep into the first group, my parents were involved,
and there was a young woman who took her life
in large part it was understood because of her relationship
(28:47):
to this teacher, and that really hit home for me
when I started to look into Her name was Brenda Kerber,
And when I started to look into that story, it
definitely resonated for me and thinking about what I I
was raised in that I never saw anything like that
when I was growing up, but I think whatever the group,
when you were offering the answer to the entire universe
(29:12):
and why we're here and what we're doing, the stakes
couldn't possibly be higher. And people who arrive at an
alternative idea of that answer, who don't maybe accept the
conventional wisdom or thoughts about why we're here and what
it means. Those people, I feel like are disproportionately going
(29:36):
to be people who already feel like they're on the margins,
who feel like society is not answering the questions that
they need to answer, so they are imperiled in the
sense that they may be suffering in a more elevated
way than your average person. Well, well, does that make sense.
I'm I'm kind of dancing around it because I don't
want to, like, I'm not trying to say that any
(29:58):
of these groups did the groups that my parents were
involved in actually did that to a person. I do
not know that, but I do know that, like vulnerable
people who are searching for something that's outside of the
boundaries of conventional society, it feels like a pretty dangerous
position to be in.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Well, and like, yes, vulnerable people joined, but then also
like the minute all of your trust and all of
your faith and all of your life is put into
the hands of one individual who gets power hungry, and
often they, like you know, seem to unravel and get
paranoid as they get older and people start to leave, Like, yeah,
(30:38):
that's I think you're basically entirely at the whims of
at the whimsicalness of who is at the top and
who is controlling your life, and like lucky that they
don't happen to want to You know that this Jones
didn't happen to want everybody to die. But how many groups,
(30:59):
if the leader to go in that direction, would lead
people into that direction? Because again, once you have accepted
the premise that this person is God or directly in
touch with God, or knows things that nobody else in
the world knows, well, what choice do you have but
to listen to them?
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Yeah, And I could not agree with that more. And
the line in the sand feels like a very thin line.
Last year, I spent quite a bit of time looking
into another cult group, which.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
We're going to have you on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
I said seven, you said forty. We'll see.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
I will accept any and all offers. Seven and forty
seems like a great range to be in lots to discuss.
But there's a group in the Dallas area in the
nineteen seventies and eighties called the Conscious Development of Mind, Body,
and Spirit.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
All have such great names, okay.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Such I mean, these could all be indie bands. Terry
Hoffman was the leader of that group. And Terry Hoffman
was this kind of spiritual advisor. She was a very
odd person. She was like not who you'd think of.
She was not particularly charismatic.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Which can also be charismatics.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Somehow, she had this kind of raggedy profit street profit
kind of vibe to Yeah. Yeah, I mean she talked
about being an orphan, which was maybe true, maybe not
like birth records. Anyway. The point is is she started
a group which in their documents suggests that there is
some other plane that we can be on if we
(32:40):
sort of practice her regimen, and a number of her
followers mysteriously committed suicide, some of whom even talked about
that plane, the purple plane, that they would go to shit.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
That's what we're saying with chat Chipetina.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Yeah, it's it's really fright. And in the case of Hoffman,
you know, the IRS and the FBI and local law
enforcement did get involved because it seemed coincidentally that a
number of the people who took their.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Lives left their stuff, left their life insurance policy.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
Oh. I have things to say about this, but I
can't right now because I need to wait until more
comes out.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
But okay, yeah, to that point, right, Like, there is
a range in high control groups of what appears to
just be harmless if you want to call it harmless.
It certainly didn't feel that way to me, but like
harmless worship of an individual through you know, ritualized practices
(33:49):
like meditation, offering flowers, putting ash on the picture.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Of them and yeah, what's the ritual? No problem?
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Yeah, right, like do you yeah, you know or him
or whatever? Leslie him, I try to do you. It's
not going to work out too. There's really only one
room for one at the top.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
I think about Moses Storm. I think he was like
our second guest.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
I think in a great episode said something about how
he was really fearful when he was younger, that his
mom was I don't want to butcher his quote, but sorry, Moses,
you hear this, but that his mom might hurt them
because you know, once your soul is a certain age.
I think it's like ten or twelve, you're now responsible
(34:38):
for going to heaven or hell. And a woman in
the group that he was in killed her children, and
he worried that that might be his fate. And I
have talked to several people who were just raised normal
Christian who kind of felt that way, like, maybe you
know before, I'm actually a sinner because this damnation thing
(34:59):
feels very real.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Something to save me? Yeah, oh wow. Interesting.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Yeah, speaking of putting all of your faith and belief
into a leader, you hit a point in your teenage
years where you did, in fact do that.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Can you tell us about that?
Speaker 4 (35:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (35:15):
And I think it's sort of apologies for time shifting
a little bit here. I think, you know, part of
what brought me to that place was a desire to be,
as we discussed, sort of like closer to my parents'
belief system and sort of fall in line with what
they wanted. But then also, you know, being in these
highly organized, kind of social, socially engineered environments where you're
(35:40):
in front of the grow and he's doing all this
stuff and looking at you a certain way, and you
feel like you know you've experienced something or not. But
you're not sure, but you know, there was a lot
of that. I remember I walked out of that first meditation,
they call it a darshan. I remember I exited the
room and the cole there hit me again because the
room was were controlled, very nice, everything was expensive, like
(36:04):
everything was decorated. He's on the top of this podium,
you know, or the point what do you call it,
like a diases like on sitting there way above you,
you know, and then the cold air hit me and
I just started crying and I just burst into tears
because I just felt like I didn't even know what
it was that I had just experienced. What did that mean?
What was it? And so I think I spent, you know,
(36:27):
increasingly the years from that point forward until we left
the group when I was about seventeen, both willing myself
to believe that what I saw wasn't the cigarette burn
but was the magical electric fire of divine healing. Yeah, yeah, right, So,
(36:50):
and I tried to articulate this, and I have over
the years tried to articulate this that there's like it
was like living in both of those worlds at the
same time between like okay, order for me to know
what he says he knows and I don't know. I
have to worship him as God, but like, is it
going to get there? But if I question it, is
it going to actually make it hard for me to
(37:12):
get there? Like I had to that part of the practice,
the quote unquote practice, was disabling the doubt that you
had about his spiritual ubiquity. So it was accepted and
cleverly positioned as something to both, you know, arrest yourself of,
(37:37):
but also something that you might feel because you can't
tell people they don't feel a certain way and have
them stick around. But you can be like, yeah, you
don't believe that I'm God, but that's normal. Keep believing
until you believe it. And so I, having been through that,
still feel like for many the people in that group,
(37:58):
who like person you saw on the internet like doggedly
believe that all these allegations are salacious ignorant. I feel
like those people must on some fundamental level live with
that doubt. There is no way as a human being
to live with that doubt because I do not believe
(38:18):
that he is God.
Speaker 4 (38:21):
And some people just go straight to their unconscious you know,
like they don't Yeah, I think they just unconsciously feel
that and they don't even know that they do.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
I don't know if you guys have encountered this with
other people you've talked to. But I find myself both
wanting to explain the bare bones of my experience with y'all,
but also to interrogate how it might happen, because there's
a pedestrian answer to that question, which is, yeah, I
believed it. I sat there, I worshiped him. I willed
(38:51):
myself into these experiences that I thought were like me
experiencing him. You were like you were literally told to
breathe and visualize him coming into your body. Oh wow, Yes,
that was from the top of your head. He came
down like a roller coaster, whow through the chakras or whatever,
and then down up the back of your spine.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
I don't get out of my body. I don't want
you in there.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
We're supposed to want him in there. So like, there's
a level of operationalizing, if you will, of the practice
of submitting yourself to this person that you could follow
almost by rote and not have to question the actual
mechanics of it. I don't think I've ever mentioned that
(39:34):
piece before publicly, and to see your reaction to it,
just like gave me the he Begb's right, because I'm like,
oh yeah, oh yeah, that is weird, you know, like
yeah shit, yeah, so yes, I think I believed it.
I practiced the the disciplines, but on some very deep level, unconscious,
(39:56):
maybe I felt like I was always questioning whether or
not this was something real.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
Yeah, like you would have the emotional experience of it,
but there's always a part of you that's like, was
that just was that manufacturer? Like part of you always
wonders that, yes, yeah, that is so interesting. I have
told the story a million times, so apologies to our listeners.
But when I believed in my cult leader, I was,
(40:25):
you know, praying, and I'm sure you've heard this as well.
I was praying to bear my testimony by myself, and
I got this, like I couldn't bring myself to finish
the sentence. I know that Blank is a true prophet,
and I like took note of it. I was like,
I'll just like think about that later. I just won't
worry about that right now. But like both things were
(40:46):
there simultaneously, Like I felt really wrapped up in this,
the excitement of being chosen you know, being I'm separated
from my mom, but it feels like which is really difficult.
But I'm like, okay, I'm suffering for a higher peris
and like it feels like I'm going to, you know,
in a movie, like I'm a fucking Han Solo or
(41:06):
something or sorry not Han Solo.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
The other one.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
I don't know anything about Star Wars Skywalker. He's like,
I'm Luke Skywalker.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Are they the same person? No?
Speaker 5 (41:17):
No, you guys, I know that I'm screaming in here.
Oh my god, hilarious.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Okay, not Star Wars people in this room.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
It's great, but you know, like, but at the same time,
I have this other thing that like coexists with it
at the same time, and I'm kind of doesn't.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Like we do answer this question typically like kind of
one or the other, depending on where it's most leaning
at that time.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
But the truth is, most of the time it's multiple things.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
We have multiple minds about it at the same time,
and part of it might just not be conscious yet
or as conscious. I think people who have not experienced
what the three of us have in some fashion.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Or the immortals yes, yes, or.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Who haven't you know, delved into the world of cult
survivors or whatever. Like we'll hear people like us talk
about cognitive dissonance and talk about how you know, on
some level we know. And I've heard people be like, well,
you know, though, so why don't you just leave because
you obviously know? And that that's the thing I kind
of just want to push back against, because like, even
(42:26):
when you have a feeling like you have all of
these other feelings that are so much bigger and gas lit, yes,
and you are being actively manipulated, you are surrounded by
people who believe the same thing. It's your community, it's
your identity, it's your life is being controlled. And so
even if part of you on some level might have
(42:47):
an inkling, you don't know that that inkling is real,
and your.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Top of that inkling is like, well, in my case,
the devil you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're exactly.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
You're given a framework for what that inkling means that
prevents you from actually recognizing it as critical thinking the
ego exactly, exactly, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Yeah, that's what you have to find. You have to
find that discomfort and find a way to let it go.
And I think even when you have like if you
believe this is a thing like a snapping moment, you know,
where you sort of like haven't about about what you believe,
or if it's more gradual whatever, the sort of process
of kind of disentangling yourself from the beliefs there is,
(43:32):
there's just a thread that will always be there, at
least for me. There's knowledge that you can you can
wander down a rabbit hole somewhere and end up with
a set of beliefs that you realize in that moment
you didn't want, but have no way of being able
to kind of really delineate how you got there.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Yeah, the leader doesn't even know.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Yeah, that's true, Which is which when I'm asked about
do I think that jos wanted this group to be
the way that it was, I don't think he did.
And he actually publicly said that he would say, only
the worst of men, only the worst of man and
cad come to me, you know, a web of talking
(44:15):
and he would say, like, only the worst of mankind
come to me. This idea that like his followers were
not shining citizens, which is its own. That's true, to
be clear, Like these people dedicated their lives the first time. Yeah,
and people endured this kind of harsh language from him.
(44:36):
We get into it.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
He was such a to them, yeah, and then so
loving and so fucked Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
And for our maybe our ninth or tenth conversation of
the between seven and forty one. You know, my dad
was in a way as aspired ultimately to be like him.
And I just wrote a book about him. He just
passed away this year, and I'm sorry, Yeah, I think
I mean it was both. It was both a very
(45:04):
sad moment, but he also had been struggling with dementia
for almost a decade, so you know, I think there
was some relief there too. But you know, my dad
was it was almost easier for me to acknowledge his
behavior as abusive, even though in many ways his behavior
was precisely the kind of behavior that people in the
(45:27):
group experienced, you know. But he wanted to be like him,
you know, wanted to have that authority, wanted to be
able to sort of pin somebody something Jones would do
start going all over the map. But something Jones would
do is like pick people out, like you would have
these like groups where people would ask questions, and sometimes
(45:50):
people would ask a question that seemed benign like you'd
watch it, you'd be like, this is legitimately no different
than the question that came before it from somebody else.
But he would like get in his head and he
would totally destroy that person.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
Just escapegoat them.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Just completely eviscerate them, like down to the bones of
who he said that they were. And that was supposed
to be a blessing. And people in the group will
tell you that, but they'll almost tell it to you sometimes,
some of them with a kind of like like in
an exulting way, the blessing of his fierce criticism.
Speaker 3 (46:25):
Oh my god, no, no, yeah, it's so acting classes
in LA, those like negative acting classes, and you see it.
Speaker 4 (46:34):
They escapegoat somebody that like somebody will ask a question
and somebody will do a scene and that scene was
just terrible, and you're like, what the fuck are you
talking about? Anyway, Yes, I haven't been to.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
Those Oh yeah, break you down to build you.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Up so ugly, ugly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
The problem with that whole notion, even if there's some
rationale behind it, which I don't think that there is,
but the problem with that notion is there is a
vacuum that appears when one person and submits their own
agency to another that is filled by the person who's
saying they're helping you become something better. Right then just
(47:10):
gobbles it up. It's like insatiable, you know, need to
have that sense, you know, that bigger sense of who
they are or whatever they think that they're doing. I mean,
I'm just psychoanalyzing Jones now, but like, yeah, yeah, I
mean I have always found it difficult to answer those
kinds of questions directly. And I think I'm okay with
(47:33):
living in a territory of thinking as a human being
on this planet for as long as I'm here, which
is forever.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
I was like, is he about to forget forever?
Speaker 1 (47:46):
I'm comfortable with living with the idea that I could
have and can, at any moment wander into somebody else's
coercive story and lose myself. Not that I will, not
that that's very likely given everything that I've been through
and what I do with my life on a daily basis,
(48:07):
but it's possible.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
That's it gives you the resilience to be wrong, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Right, because part of this is the idea that you
aren't ever wrong.
Speaker 4 (48:17):
Right.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
The whole reason I did dear Franklin Jones was I
wanted my parents to understand, just for a moment that
this linear trajectory they thought that we were on towards
spiritual fulfillment. That they would literally say to me that
they were like freeing themselves of all these karmic attachments
to ego and to like lives that they had passed
(48:40):
lives they lived all this stuff about like that was
supposed to be reaching towards their spiritual enlightenment, their freedom,
their absorption into Jones that because they were doing that work,
somehow this was like a genetic inheritance for me and
that I was going to get it and be better off,
Which is a little bit puzzling if you think that
you live multiple lives too, Like which life is? Does
it like reset in the next one? Do I carry
(49:02):
it over?
Speaker 2 (49:03):
Like is it a death?
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Wow, it's convoluted. But they believed in some way there
was a trajectory that we were on together and that
it was going to be you know, that this was better.
And I think for me, I just wanted them to
acknowledge the possibility that maybe we went down like maybe
on a little bit of a wout chase there, and
(49:28):
that like you can make mistakes in life and still
be on the path. They wanted to believe so much
that there were no side channels that they went off on,
that they didn't make any mistakes and this was all
grist for the mill, and I don't believe that it was.
(49:48):
That's all I wanted them to do was acknowledge that
it was possible we made a mistake somewhere along line,
even if it was just Hey, things were pretty good
until the nineties and then it got a little weird
and we ducked. Yeah, but it wasn't possible for them,
and my dad and I were estranged from each other
after the podcast came out for that exact reason. And frankly,
(50:09):
I don't and I'll say this, I don't care, like
I don't think my mom and I were ever the
same after this either.
Speaker 4 (50:16):
Really really, I mean, I am so impressed with this podcast.
Like people do not talk to their parents how you
talk to your parents, I mean, and I don't mean
that you're being disrespectful at all, No, No, you really
just say, hey, here's what happened, and some of it's
so vast like uncomfortable, and you sat with that in
(50:37):
a way that I am not able to do well.
Speaker 1 (50:40):
I appreciate you saying that. I don't think my parents
were able to sit with it in a way that
they could embrace, despite the fact that I think they
would want, both of them individually to believe that they
were the most open minded, the most trupressive, the most
forward thinking people out there, and yet they couldn't acknowledge
(51:02):
in their own son a sense that this maybe wasn't
all wine and roses for him, right, And I think
to your point that ability to acknowledge mistake is so
important to not falling prey to a high control environment,
(51:23):
because the high control environment establishes an objective truth, squishy
and elusive as it might be, that you need to
aspire towards enlightenment, salvation, whatever it is, and you can't
ever question that you're questioning is the process of getting there.
(51:47):
And yet mistakes changing, you know, courses in life, pivoting, restarting,
like that's what makes us better, that's what makes us whole,
that's what makes us human.
Speaker 3 (52:00):
Right, and not restarting because God decided we should. But right, yeah,
because oh maybe that was wrong with the book.
Speaker 1 (52:07):
They were just doing hoops, Okay, Yeah, let me redo that.
I mean, yeah, I think that's our humanity. I think
as a dad. I've got two boys now, one who's
seven and one who is like twenty one months, and
I think about the little dude. If I operated from
the point of view that he needed to live in
(52:30):
a world where he never made mistakes, how dangerous that
would be when he was like belly flopping on a
chair earlier today and like tipping over to the side.
If I didn't believe that, it was like if I
caught him and maybe he hurt himself, and like he
needed to be comforted, but then reminded that, like maybe
he shouldn't sit on that chair. Like isn't that like
(52:52):
the nature of parenting. You grow up, you get older,
your kids make mistakes, like somebody you know, I don't know,
Heaven forbid, like crashes a car, or like it's a
bad grade on a test. If I was like living
in some world where mistakes were not an option, I
would be fighting against the nature of reality.
Speaker 2 (53:09):
But so many people do, yes, so many, I mean
so many people in the political sphere.
Speaker 3 (53:15):
That's like their entire em oh, the way that they operate,
even even in relationships.
Speaker 2 (53:21):
I find it difficult. It's difficult to find people who
can acknowledge that.
Speaker 3 (53:24):
I mean, it's and I've struggled with acknowledging that I
still do. You know, like it's one of the hardest
things I think as a human to be able to
have that humility and say I was wrong, I hurt someone, right,
and I'm gonna do better, right.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
And I think like on the twelve Steps we are
like really covering everything.
Speaker 4 (53:43):
But you know, like like one of the goals of
it is that you do say I made a mistake,
I was wrong here, and you realize like, oh I
didn't die.
Speaker 2 (53:52):
Yes, that wasn't that big of a deal.
Speaker 4 (53:54):
It's like doing it is so much harder than experiencing
it after So I don't.
Speaker 3 (53:59):
Know, basically, we all should just get better as saying
we were wrong sometimes apologizing and it's really not that
big of a deal.
Speaker 2 (54:08):
It's like fine, Yes.
Speaker 1 (54:09):
It is completely fine to make mistakes and to move
on with your life and to like find a way
to be somebody else than what you were a moment earlier.
And I think that's a beautiful Yeah, it's a beautiful
part of life. But it's such a beautiful dream too.
That like there is some other side, you know, that
(54:32):
where everything is perfect, where you are perfect, where you
don't die.
Speaker 4 (54:38):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah all in the dream.
Speaker 3 (54:42):
Yeah wow, well we should we should wrap up suits.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
I was like, I just looked at my watch.
Speaker 2 (54:49):
I know, I know.
Speaker 3 (54:53):
I mean, briefly, how did you come to leave? How
did you your family come to leave? How did you
come to leave?
Speaker 1 (55:01):
So funny, We're just getting to this now, so much
to cover. But there was another acupuncturist in the picture.
Speaker 2 (55:08):
Oh he was cheating.
Speaker 1 (55:09):
He was cheating on my parents with another acupuncturist, or
they were disinvited from their regular appointment as his acupuncturists.
And I think they believed he'd had to do with
the fact that he was seeing another acupuncturist. They believed
he was having like a sexual relationship with that person.
I don't actually know. I cannot remember whether or not
(55:32):
she denied that fact, or whether or not she spoke
about it.
Speaker 2 (55:37):
Your dad was like, I know my unlicensed acupuncture.
Speaker 1 (55:43):
I may not have gone to acupuncture school, but I
know my guns. You cheated. No, But I think they
they felt she had sort of inter intervened on their
unique relationship with Jones, and they were kind of like
spun out from there and my dad lost it. Definitely
was not happy. He was convinced at that point that
(56:03):
Jones was a bad person, like funny, that that was
what sent him over the edge. But at one point
he was going to write his own scathing memoir about
being in the group. He was going to call it
Vampires Kiss. Yes, feels like a maybe an Anne Rice novel,
but I need some workshopping Vampires Kiss. Maybe it was
(56:27):
Kiss of the Vietnam No, that is it, Anne Rice.
So he was quite upset. He wanted to leave, and
I didn't want to go. I didn't want to leave.
I was still wedded to this group at this point.
I had built my whole life around it. I had
left high school, I was homeschooled, living in northern California,
(56:49):
part of the group. I didn't want to leave. I
used to hide a picture of Jones in my room
for my parents because I didn't want them to see
that I still had it up. Wow, those last months
year before it just kind of like everything just sort
of and then there was just a long, a long
(57:09):
period of almost like recovering, like we had just come
down from this thing. I don't even know if I
was completely out of it yet, you know what I mean.
I just felt like I was in this ugh state
for quite some time. But my dad was the one
who wanted to leave, and my mom of course did
whatever he wanted to do. And then, you know, eventually
I came to I probably a far more pointed conclusion
(57:33):
about Jones than he did in the end, because till
the day my dad died, he believed that Jones was
He even says it in the series. He's like, you know,
you can be enlightened and still be an asshole. Was
his belief Jones could be all these things. A manipulator,
you know, chee puncture, yeah, yeah, acupuncture of course.
Speaker 2 (57:55):
Because that's making you grow such part of it.
Speaker 1 (57:58):
Yeah, So he believed that that was like almost part
of it, part of the group, part of the you know,
part of this tradition of spiritual teachers who challenge you know,
in Buddhism and Hinduism and called them like crazy whise teachers.
Speaker 2 (58:12):
Why why why did they leave all together?
Speaker 3 (58:15):
Instead of just accepting that they were run of the
mill members.
Speaker 1 (58:19):
I think he must have had his own kind of
snapping moment. Yeah, just probably hurt a lot. Yeah, and
he did want to be his own mini Jones, you know,
so like he would host these meditations on Sundays. Oh really, yeah,
my dad would after that.
Speaker 2 (58:35):
Interesting so never formed.
Speaker 1 (58:38):
Yeah, no, it didn't stick with him.
Speaker 4 (58:40):
And less charismatic with Jones either, Like at the end
of his life, he was like, we don't have enough people.
Why is this only reaching a thousand people? And if
you are enlightened, like I don't.
Speaker 2 (58:50):
Like, it's oh your fault. You guys did a bad job.
Speaker 4 (58:53):
You know.
Speaker 1 (58:53):
There were seven stages of life in Jones's like, oh
group in his philosophy, as far as I know, nobody
made it past one point two holy shit, So you'd
be like, you'd get like level.
Speaker 2 (59:06):
One so scientilgalogy.
Speaker 1 (59:08):
Yeah, and he did dabble in that before stars.
Speaker 4 (59:12):
Yes, well, thank you for covering every corner of cults
with us my life and I've learned a lot today.
Speaker 1 (59:24):
Oh my god, it's been such a pleasure. I'm so
grateful to have a chance to meet you guys and
talk about all this stuff.
Speaker 3 (59:31):
And you know where you have so many projects? Yes,
what are you doing right now?
Speaker 1 (59:37):
Well, I continue to make documentary series. I head up
something for Sony's podcast division called The Binge, which is
like true crime docs. I produce some of them. I
helped to edit and executive produce the other ones. So yeah,
I mean people can find me anywhere Instagram. Maybe I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (59:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (59:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (59:58):
And the podcast that we've been referring to throughout this
episode was called Dear Franklin Jones. Yes, and you also
wrote a book that I feel you should mention.
Speaker 1 (01:00:06):
Yes, I should mention the book. Thank you. I wrote
a book for Simon and Schuster that came out this
year called The Mind Is Burning Losing my father to
a cult and dementia, and it sort of, I think,
picks up where Dear Franklin Jones leaves off and digs
into my life with my dad after I did the series,
(01:00:28):
backtrack a little bit and talk about my childhood too,
but mostly through the lens of my relationship to him,
because we were effectively estranged after Dear Franklin Jones came
out and then he got sick with dementia, and that
began the many years long journey towards you know, illness
(01:00:49):
and ultimately death, which I will not myself be incurring. Yes,
I had to get one last let us. But yeah,
the mind is Burning is the name of the of
the book.
Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
Thank you so much for joining us, and we're coming
into this duty.
Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
Oh my god, my pleasure. This has been the most
delightful and enjoyable conversation about cults that I have ever had.
Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
So good.
Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
Thank you, thank you, thank you, really really fun.
Speaker 4 (01:01:22):
All right, that concludes the second part of our interview
with Jonathan, and today, Lola, we're going to do something
a little out of the ordinary. I'm going to ask
you you yourself, would.
Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
You join this cult?
Speaker 3 (01:01:37):
I mean, I don't think this will be a surprise
to anyone, but probably not.
Speaker 4 (01:01:40):
Now.
Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
I mean, okay, here's what I like.
Speaker 3 (01:01:44):
I do like the meditation aspect, and I do like ritual.
Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
I do like those things.
Speaker 4 (01:01:52):
They would just need to call it like mindfulness and discipline, Yes.
Speaker 3 (01:01:57):
Exactly, improved improve yourself. Yeah, and like I gotta say, like,
I find his face so compelling that I feel you're
speaking of the leader, of course, Yes, the leader, ADDI
da Franklin Jones, not Jonathan harsh although I love Jonathan Harshay. Yes,
I mean, you're obsessed with this man's face, it's just
so like I think as a director, I'm like, you know,
(01:02:20):
like some faces are just so interesting and you like
want them as a character actor or whatever.
Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
Like that's kind of how I feel.
Speaker 3 (01:02:26):
I'm like, I want to cast this man posthumously and
like have him play a weirdo in a movie. Like
I just find his face very interesting. But I don't
think ultimately that new age groups are my kind of groups.
Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
Well that's fine, leave them all for me.
Speaker 4 (01:02:42):
Mark, Okay, so greedy, Thanks for listening to us another
week you guys. As always, remember to rate us five
stars and remember to grab some trust Me merch at
exactly rightstore dot com. And as always, remember to follow
your gut, watch out for red flags.
Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
And never ever trust me. Bye.
Speaker 3 (01:03:09):
This has been an Exactly Right production hosted by me
Lola Blanc and.
Speaker 4 (01:03:13):
Me Megan Elizabeth. Our senior producer is g.
Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
Holly. This episode was mixed by John Bradley.
Speaker 4 (01:03:19):
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain, and our guest booker
is Patrick Kottner.
Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
Our theme song was composed by Holly Ambert Church.
Speaker 4 (01:03:26):
Trust Me as executive produced by Karen Kilgareth Georgia Hartstark
and Danielle Kramer.
Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
You can find us on Instagram at trust Me Podcast
or on TikTok at trust Me Cult Podcast.
Speaker 4 (01:03:36):
Got your own story about cults, extreme belief our, manipulation,
Shoot us an email at trustmepod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3 (01:03:43):
Listen to trust Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts
Trust me. Do you trust her?
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Right ever lead you astray?
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Trust? This is the truth, the only truth.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
If anybody ever tells you to just trust them, don't hello.
We record these episodes in advance, so I'm just going
to add a quick insert here because if you're listening
in America, the mood in our nation is heavy this week,
and it doesn't feel right to not address it. Alex Preddie,
an American citizen and an ICU nurse who was holding
his phone to film and not brandishing the gun he
was legally carrying on him, was killed by immigration officers
(00:31):
in Minneapolis while on the ground, just a couple of
weeks after Renee Good was killed by ice when driving away.
Her killer can be heard on video calling her a
fucking bitch after he shot her to death. Both of
these people were there to observe, as is their legal right,
to protect their communities from the escalating violence of federal
agents in our country, who Trump claims are there to
protect Americans who feels safer. The Trump administrations rush to
(00:55):
characterize the victims of these extra judicial killings as deserving terrorists,
despite video evidence clearly showing that they pose no threat.
Should alum us all, don't listen to your eyes and ears.
Listen to what I say, not what you see. For
those who haven't been following immigration policy in the US
and maybe don't understand what all the fuss is about.
I know a lot of people think that people on
(01:17):
the letter just being hysterical, which of course sometimes we are.
In May of last year, Steven Miller, White House senior
Advisor and DHS Secretary Christino, both of whom are openly
anti immigrant. Stephen Miller has made an entire career of
fear mongering about how immigrants are going to destroy white culture.
They ordered ICE to stop focusing on people with criminal
records and just try to reach a goal of three
(01:37):
thousand arrests per day so they could rest as many
people as possible. There's been a nearly six hundred percent
increase in average daily arrests since Trump's twenty twenty five inauguration,
so that means people with no criminal record are being
stopped in public spaces, more people are being racially profiled,
and now, even though we're spending billions of dollars on this,
nearly seventy five percent of people detained by ICE have
(01:59):
no criminal cons I've said this before, I will say
it again. Undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate
than people who were born in America. They also pay
taxes and di services they don't get access to. So
what is it really about in a country that purports
to be free when an armed force of federal officers
is being instructed to not only meet a quota of
arrests rooted in nothing but ideology, and not only being
(02:22):
instructed to deport people who opposed Trump's policies, as we
saw with pro Palestine protesters, but also they are now
using force against protesters who are simply legally observing, and
that force is lethal. We should all be alarmed because
that is not what free countries do. That is what
authoritarian countries do. As always, I encourage everybody to call
(02:43):
your representatives and tell them to do something and not
just make an angry tweet. All right, That's the end
of my carry on with colts. Welcome to Trust Me,
the podcast about cults and extreme belief and manipulation from.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Two cult kids in fact experience Instead. I'm Lowl Blanc
and I'm Megan Elizabeth. This week is Part two with
Jonathan Hirsch, podcaster, producer, and author who grew up in
the cult of New Age guru Franklin Jones, commonly known
as Addie daw. Last week we learned about the leader
and how Jonathan's parents joined the group, and this week
he's going to tell us about the group's theatrical weekly meditations,
(03:20):
what it was like getting blessed by Franklin Jones, and
how different members saw some of the same things that
had happened completely differently depending on whether they still believed
in him later or not.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
It's so interesting.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
We'll talk about the lawsuits and allegations against John's how
the cult panic of the time impacted the way his
followers saw it, how Jonathan left himself, and the importance
of being able to admit when you're wrong. Our favorite,
our favorite thing that's so easy and fun to do.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
It's so fun. I love it.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Same before we jump in with our fabulous guest, Jonathan Megan,
kindly tell me your cultiest thing.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
This week, a new docuseries was released on HBO. It's
called Andrea Yates The Cult Behind the Killer. A lot
of people will probably remember Andrea Yates from the early
two thousands. She killed five of her children and she
was on the cover of every magazine, every newspaper, a
very salacious story, but we never really got a clear
behind the scene picture of what was actually going on
(04:26):
with Andrea and our second interview ever on this podcast,
the Trust Me Podcast, was with Moses Storm, who was
in this documentary. He was in this cult and I
would love for people to go listen to the episode.
I myself have not watched this docuseries yet on HBO.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
It's very heavy.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
I'm going to I'm planning on it, but it's something
you gotta be really ready for. It's the worst case
scenario of what can happen in these dynamics that we
talk about all the time.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Yeah, I really have to limit my my doc intake
when it comes to topics like this because it's it
is just really, really tough to watch. But Moses does
a really amazing job in our interview with him of
finding that balance between like talking about what happened, and
also he's a comedian and he's like so fucking funny,
(05:18):
so he of course peppers it with with his unique
blend of humor.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Yeah, he has He has an HBO comedy special called
Trash White that's one of the funniest things I've ever
seen in my life. Only he could hold this story
with the grace that makes it one of my favorite
episodes we've ever done, while also being one of the
scariest totally topics we've ever covered. So I will be
(05:45):
watching the documentary this week are the docuseries what have you?
But you know, I'm gonna make sure that I, like,
I have a copy of Friends the next day or
something planned, because it's just.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah, yeah, that's your cultiest thing.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
I saw a commercial for a company which I will
not name, but a company that is a network of
psychics okay, And the language that they used was astonishing
to me because it literally is like spelling out very
(06:24):
explicitly what we say so often, you know, is one
of the strong motivations for joining occult, which is the
need for certainty. And the line is literally, thankfully, with
the help of our insightful guidance, you can clear away
the doubt and experience the joy of certainty.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
They're not even hiding that what.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
They're selling is this thing that is truly impossible to provide.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
I just was like, this is crazy.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
But it's also such a smart marketing tactic because there
is so much happening in the world right now. There's
so much uncertainty, so much turbulence and turmoil, and we're
all freaking out. And you know, I think it's something
we're all craving so much. And it's like this company
is like, just talk to one of our psychics specialists
(07:22):
and we'll give you everything you need. And I'm like,
this is such bullshit.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
And yeah, I mean, you can know it's bullshit and
still do it. I have a friend who has become
addicted to TikTok fortune or card readers, and she's like,
I know it's stupid. I want to stop, but it's
almost become like a tic.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Oh interesting.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
I mean, we've talked about having Bob Niguard on again soon.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
I'm going to text him.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
For those who have not heard the Bob Niguard episode,
he is like a psychic buster. He is like a
private investigator who finds self proclaimed psychics who are basically
just taking people's entire life savings and dangling this like, oh,
but I need a little more money if you want
this answer.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
We need a little more money if you want you know,
and it's a crime.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Yeah, but he like gathers everything and then gets them
busted and it's so cool, and you know, whatever y'all believe.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
I think we.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Can all agree that taking people's life savings is wrong, yes,
and taking advantage of people in vulnerable moments in their
lives is wrong.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Agree.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Yeah, And that is what this network is not even
hiding that they're trying to do.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Oh my god, well give me the number. So anyway,
that's that. Well, shall we talk to Jonathan?
Speaker 2 (08:50):
We shall?
Speaker 3 (09:03):
I did want to ask you about that conflict that
you must have felt.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
So you're a kid, do you believe in it?
Speaker 3 (09:09):
First of all, before this moment with your father where
he's like, should I get off the pot or whatever?
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah, I mean no, I think I wasn't being necessarily
asked to believe it. But it was like in the periphery,
you know, I think we would go to the Sunday
events or whatever they called them, Guruvara, which was like
grew day day, Yeah, Sunday, And on the day when everybody,
you know, in the wider Christian world is resting, we
(09:38):
are worshiping the Guru. He's probably resting somewhere. He is
technically resting now, yes, yeah, yeah, we're not, We're not,
We're never resting. But I didn't wholeheartedly believe it, nor
was there sort of like an imposition on me to
(09:59):
believe it. But yes, after a while I wanted to
believe it. And I think one of the things that
I've talked a lot about and that I struggled with
as a teenager was reconciling my desire to believe it
the experiences that you know, manipulated or not, which you know,
(10:20):
when you went to these public sittings, these meditations with Jones,
they were highly orchestrated. They were very theatrical the way
they were put together, with the music and the lights,
and you had to wait in line, you know, to
go and give him a flower and put it at
his feet, and then he looked at you with those eyes.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Oh wow, And that.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Was supposed to be the blessing. So that whole experience
you can perceive as something different than what it is.
And it was very difficult for me, even as a
young adult to write about that, and it confessed that
and I talk about that in the series, just how
I couldn't quite make sense of what had happened that day.
The first time I sat in one of these things
(10:59):
because it was Yeah, it was very orchestrated. As the
best way I can I can discribe what did that
feel like for you? It felt like you have so
much anticipation about this moment. Your parents are telling you
he's this powerful person. You're hearing people scream and shout
his name and they're like chanting. All these chants are
(11:22):
basically like South Indian traditional chants that are like translated
into Jones speaks, so like his name isn't it instead
of Shiva or Vishnu? And you spend hours, at least
the first time I spent hours in this environment where
you're like changing Its good.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I mean that sounds like a rave or something.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Yeah, without the drugs.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah, they're like in a new new reality.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Of course, that's going to create it's a heightened sensory experience,
and it's prolonged, and it's among other people, like regardless
of who's doing it or what the context is, like,
that's gonna that's going to be very likely to create
a peak experience.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Exactly, and you're sort of building up to it. I'm
building my whole life up into this room. And it's loud,
it's cold, outside. We're outside, we're literally at this massive
gate in front of his house, and then you kind
of go in one by one and everybody goes in
and you finally get to the front of the line.
It's like that you know, new restaurant that you want
to try, and you're just like, yeah, literally you open
(12:22):
the door and they're supposedly Infinity right right, right, Okay,
I gotta try that. So so you know, you get
in the room and there's also I remember the whoosh
of like warm air, like I had just been in
the cold for hours anticipating this moment, and you're in
(12:42):
this like little entryway. He's an excellent producer. That is
a very good way of putting it. Like the show
is for you for approximately three to five seconds, but
you will wait hours for it.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Whoa.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
And so you get there, you get to the front
and he's on this raised dais hence the cardboard cutout
of him sitting. He's like sitting on this massive chair.
You're like, I've seen that before. Yeah, got it. That
explains a lot all the awkward dinner parties at my house. Yeah,
(13:18):
we actually never had dinner parties at our house. But
it's funny to think of the idea of everybody showing
up and they're just being there Frank, yeah, in the corner.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
So you were just like sitting there with this three
to five seconds beyond the vibe.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
You have a flower and you put it at his
feet and you bow and then you look up and
he looks you in the eyes and that's it. Boom,
that's the moment you've been waiting for.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
And he doesn't say anything, doesn't say so sweet, you're
looking at us in the eyes, and it's.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Yes, yeah, sorry, I should know better as a producer,
explain what I'm doing.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
And out of context, that might not have been anything.
But you've been this whole thing has been built up
for you your entire life. An eye contact always feels
a little bit intimate, direct eye contact right, like very uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Sometimes as they all looking with each other's eyes.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
I know, now I can't start.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
That brings me to something that happened earlier, and we
can just touch on it quickly. But there was, you know,
a sex party going on and somebody got.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Burned with a cigarette.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
Yes, so there's two different complete stories about this.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
One is like normal and one is heightened.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
Yes, So basically, a woman gets burned with a cigarette
during an orgy. Yes, some people believe that they saw
him touch her and like fire exploded and she became
one with him for a second.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
And was healed. There was something something healed, And.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Then other people were like, he burned her with a cigarette.
And it's just so interesting how when you are in
these heightened states, somebody can be like he sat there
and looked at you for two seconds, and you can
be experiencing somebody touching you with fire and being healed.
It's like all narrative somehow.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
It is, and it just the poetry that imbued Jones's philosophy,
and if it hit right for you, his followers, it's
indistinguishable from your own sort of personal private machinations about
the variability of the of the experience itself. So if
(15:29):
you want to believe it, in other words, you will.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Believe it and you will feel it.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Yeah. I remember there were these tapes of these flute
scored readings of his that I remember listening to when
I was a kid, and it was like followers who
were reading them, and in one of them and like
even as you're saying that, I'm like thinking, like how
do I explain what you felt inside? There was like
literal childhood tapes, and in one of them, very specifically,
(15:54):
it says, this is Jones's words describing himself basically in
the way people should see him in. This is in
the early days. It became far more complicated later. Anyways,
he says, he smiles at you. You notice him. Everything
has already died. This is the other world.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Whoa.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
And that's like the pacing at which it's read. So
you're just like you got going on. It's just really
vibing you a certain demo.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
I mean, even just hearing you say that, I was like, yeah, yeah,
take me there.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
You notice him, everything has already died. So you just
have this sense that like he is everywhere and always
with you, and you're building a narrative as a community
around this beautiful world in which you sort of go
to the other side. Yeah, and he's waiting there for you.
He knows it and you do not, And everything miraculous
(16:53):
in the world comes from him.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Do you think he knew he was full of shit?
Speaker 1 (16:59):
I have thoughts about that. I think, like many of
these gurus and teachers, where things get sort of where
they become increasingly more important within their own cosmology over time.
I do wonder sometimes if he saw what his followers
(17:21):
wanted from him and just kept doubling down on it, how.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
Far do you think it could have gone? Because I
imagine Jonestown is happening around this time. His name happens
to be Jones, he has an island. I'm assuming a
lot of parallels were drawn after news.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Yeah, after the Jonestown massacre, people literally went up to
Franklin Jones's compound in northern California and through tomatoes.
Speaker 4 (17:46):
At the door or whatever that was just in like
ancient kingdoms.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yea, they actually got tomato.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Wow, Okay, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
That's the story that was told. No tomatoes were documented.
You were in a place that I could have known.
I don't know if they were rotten tomatoes or real tomatoes,
fresh tomatoes. No actual primary stop for y'all they were.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Can you explain a little bit what the actual lawsuits
were and what the allegations were about.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Yeah, So there were the allegations were that Jones was
manipulating people into doing things that would harm themselves, including
like uncoupling from their own partner and demanding that they
sort of like bend to his will, which included like
(18:50):
sex acts and things like that. The allegations themselves never
went to any kind of trial, so they were settled
out of court as we know, but that that information
was never made public records, so he ultimately denied any
claims that he used coercive tactics or manipulation, that he
(19:12):
was assaulting people sexually or otherwise, though those claims are
expressed by people in the podcast and certainly were in
the public forum.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
Well, Tanya, who we mentioned earlier, is on the podcast
talking about a couple of instances, one in which there
was a part a naked party where she was told
she had to shave everyone's pubes. There's one evening in
which he announced he wanted to sleep with as many
women as he can and had them all cycle into
his room. And mind you, this is literally like God,
(19:46):
So you what are you going to not do it?
Speaker 2 (19:47):
If God wants this from you?
Speaker 3 (19:49):
And Tanya, although she had a partner who she loved,
was one of the women who was told to do this,
So I mean there are first hand accounts of these
things happening. Yes, they just happened to not go to
court for it, right.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
That is correct, and I think people who remain followers
would likely continue to deny that those experiences were what
people like Tanya made them out to be, which I
think is itself so interesting that there are people who
believe so deeply in the spiritual primacy of Jones that
(20:30):
these experiences that were very clearly detailed as abuse would
be seen either as both alternately misconstrued or an opportunity
for some kind of spiritual gift that was not right,
not appreciated.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Right. Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Before you came here, we were watching some stuff on
YouTube and we saw a follower who was a woman
who basically on like a year ago, accused some of
the people who came forward with allegations of just being
after money.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Starting the state.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Yeah, which is yeah, fascinating that after all this time,
and I assume it's a decent number of people who
had things to say about what happened to them, many.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Many people who did not go on the record, many
people who I've met over the years who have reached
out to me privately after the show came out, even
you know who, I think, you know, just a testament
to the power of storytelling to just having the word
out there does become for some people a baseline of
(21:40):
understanding that makes them feel like they've been heard. And
I was grateful for those kinds of messages because it
made me feel like despite the fact that many of
these people I grew up with, none of whom I'm
really in contact with anymore, in large part because of
what was said on the Post podcast, even though I
(22:01):
think I we were talking about this earlier, but I
went to great lengths to try to be understanding of
why people would have joined Jones's group, of maybe even
why Jones thought that what he was doing was right
or whatever, trying to trying to think about these things
in the best possible light and still struggling but trying to.
(22:24):
I think it would probably have made the series differently today,
but it was a different person then. None of those
people that I knew who I grew up with in
the group could really understand or appreciate that, because to
them this was a divine being. Jones was not Franklin Jones.
He was Adi Dah somraj. He was a physical incarnation
(22:50):
of God come down into a human form to save
everybody from the dark times what they called the Coali Yuga.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Dark times, so that was the next start of time.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
It's a very long dark time. You know, they gave
themselves a super long window for that sort of joking.
It is sort of part of like, you know, some
religious ideas about eras of times.
Speaker 4 (23:13):
You guys, interesting, the age of Aquarius is like supposed
to be the new light age, right, yeah, it's it's something.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
It's it's like that, and you know, so not to
denigrate big world religion in in sort of suggesting that
that itself is not a night but the way I
think it was sort of used within the group was
as this kind of indicator of the dangers and there's
the world.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
There's so many really smart people in the group.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
And I think one of our one of the things
that we always like ticket across is that stupid people
are not who joins these groups. And I could see
somebody listening who's very smart, who's still in it, being like,
these people do not get it. They're not listening, they're
not they don't understand. It's not clacking for them. What
did Justin Bieber say, it's not clocking for you, but
like they're just projecting their own intelligence onto his teachings,
(24:07):
so like they might be believing something very smart and cool.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
But like, yeah, but to use another justin bieber frase,
I'm going to stand on my business.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Here, standing on business.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
And say that you can define words out of existence
until they mean nothing. And I think that is to
me the crux of what that thinking, when it becomes
cult like, starts to engender in some people that I
have met with in this group and other groups, who
are so sure that the vision of reality that they've
(24:43):
been sold is too beautiful and glorious to let go of.
They will try to iron out all of the nuance
and split all the hair into it makes.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Sense, yeah, because it's not an intellectual thing. It's an
emotional thing.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Yes, If we are going through life and we're on
the things, and then someone introduces us to a teaching
in a way that's giving us a peak experience that
gives us relief from that and this feeling of transcendence
and connection to all beings, like, of course we're going
to want to go towards that, and then we're going
to find ways to intellectualize why it's logical and why
it makes sense. But at the core underneath we are
(25:17):
emotional creatures and that's how we make our decisions.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
And you know, I was talking to Joe Simhart a
little while ago, who your listeners may know, was like
this kind of well known exit counselor d programmer involved
in a lot of these groups, like getting in the
weeds with some of these cult groups in the eighties.
And he's of the mind and not just paraphrasing him,
(25:41):
so I don't want to directly quote him. Says he's
not here to speak to it. But what the impression
I got from a conversation we had was, you know,
some of the people who join these groups are some
of the most intelligent people because they're able to sort
of bend to the possibility that be open minded, able
to sort of like critically imagine a world where this
(26:01):
might be true. How do what do we know? Jones
is saying that there's like you know, and some of
these talks that we'd hear in a reality you cannot see,
and the core of that reality is your own illusion
that you were not a part of it. And you're like,
maybe he's right, And how could I prove that he's not?
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Yeah, I mean it.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
Requires some cognitive flexibility and then the cults shut down
that flexibility and make it rigid.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
But that's like what brings us in, right, And that's
and that's a great point, Like how do I know
if it's true?
Speaker 1 (26:33):
I don't.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
He kind of even towards the end, really started playing
on that, like, you guys are not enlightened, and it's
not like you can be like, yeah, I am, because.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Only he knows.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
How am I not myself?
Speaker 4 (26:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (26:45):
You know, so when your parents joined and then when
you were growing up, like how did they and you
kind of square reconcile this history of these allegations and
him being in the news, you know, as this dangerous figure.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Like they had different responses when I've asked them about that.
I think they alternately felt like the media and the
news was sensational. And you know, by the mid to
late eighties, there was quite a bit of controversy around
cult groups. This is after Jonestown, people who are anti
(27:23):
cult advocates, exit counselors, people like Rick Ross or appearent
Rick Allen. Ross's like we're appearing on you know, daytime
TV shows and talking about some of these groups literally
on you know, Oprah Oprah forty eight hours, like news
programs like deprogramming people. There was quite a bit of
concern about groups that Jones was sort of lumped into.
(27:48):
I think they perceived all of that as just like
a panic, yeah, judgment masquerading as concern.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
From your perspective, now, do you think that this group
had a Jones sound potential.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
I think any high control group does. I really think
that it is possible. And you know, there were people
who were really on the margins who could have done
bad things to themselves or to others, And in my knowledge,
there were no murders or serious like you know, people
(28:24):
committing suicide or anything like that. In relationship to Jones's
group we talk about, you know, when I started to
dig deep into the first group, my parents were involved,
and there was a young woman who took her life
in large part it was understood because of her relationship
(28:47):
to this teacher, and that really hit home for me
when I started to look into Her name was Brenda Kerber,
And when I started to look into that story, it
definitely resonated for me and thinking about what I I
was raised in that I never saw anything like that
when I was growing up, but I think whatever the group,
when you were offering the answer to the entire universe
(29:12):
and why we're here and what we're doing, the stakes
couldn't possibly be higher. And people who arrive at an
alternative idea of that answer, who don't maybe accept the
conventional wisdom or thoughts about why we're here and what
it means. Those people, I feel like are disproportionately going
(29:36):
to be people who already feel like they're on the margins,
who feel like society is not answering the questions that
they need to answer, so they are imperiled in the
sense that they may be suffering in a more elevated
way than your average person. Well, well, does that make sense.
I'm I'm kind of dancing around it because I don't
want to, like, I'm not trying to say that any
(29:58):
of these groups did the groups that my parents were
involved in actually did that to a person. I do
not know that, but I do know that, like vulnerable
people who are searching for something that's outside of the
boundaries of conventional society, it feels like a pretty dangerous
position to be in.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Well, and like, yes, vulnerable people joined, but then also
like the minute all of your trust and all of
your faith and all of your life is put into
the hands of one individual who gets power hungry, and
often they, like you know, seem to unravel and get
paranoid as they get older and people start to leave, Like, yeah,
(30:38):
that's I think you're basically entirely at the whims of
at the whimsicalness of who is at the top and
who is controlling your life, and like lucky that they
don't happen to want to You know that this Jones
didn't happen to want everybody to die. But how many groups,
(30:59):
if the leader to go in that direction, would lead
people into that direction? Because again, once you have accepted
the premise that this person is God or directly in
touch with God, or knows things that nobody else in
the world knows, well, what choice do you have but
to listen to them?
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Yeah, And I could not agree with that more. And
the line in the sand feels like a very thin line.
Last year, I spent quite a bit of time looking
into another cult group, which.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
We're going to have you on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
I said seven, you said forty. We'll see.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
I will accept any and all offers. Seven and forty
seems like a great range to be in lots to discuss.
But there's a group in the Dallas area in the
nineteen seventies and eighties called the Conscious Development of Mind, Body,
and Spirit.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
All have such great names, okay.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Such I mean, these could all be indie bands. Terry
Hoffman was the leader of that group. And Terry Hoffman
was this kind of spiritual advisor. She was a very
odd person. She was like not who you'd think of.
She was not particularly charismatic.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Which can also be charismatics.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Somehow, she had this kind of raggedy profit street profit
kind of vibe to Yeah. Yeah, I mean she talked
about being an orphan, which was maybe true, maybe not
like birth records. Anyway. The point is is she started
a group which in their documents suggests that there is
some other plane that we can be on if we
(32:40):
sort of practice her regimen, and a number of her
followers mysteriously committed suicide, some of whom even talked about
that plane, the purple plane, that they would go to shit.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
That's what we're saying with chat Chipetina.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Yeah, it's it's really fright. And in the case of Hoffman,
you know, the IRS and the FBI and local law
enforcement did get involved because it seemed coincidentally that a
number of the people who took their.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Lives left their stuff, left their life insurance policy.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
Oh. I have things to say about this, but I
can't right now because I need to wait until more
comes out.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
But okay, yeah, to that point, right, Like, there is
a range in high control groups of what appears to
just be harmless if you want to call it harmless.
It certainly didn't feel that way to me, but like
harmless worship of an individual through you know, ritualized practices
(33:49):
like meditation, offering flowers, putting ash on the picture.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Of them and yeah, what's the ritual? No problem?
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Yeah, right, like do you yeah, you know or him
or whatever? Leslie him, I try to do you. It's
not going to work out too. There's really only one
room for one at the top.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
I think about Moses Storm. I think he was like
our second guest.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
I think in a great episode said something about how
he was really fearful when he was younger, that his
mom was I don't want to butcher his quote, but sorry, Moses,
you hear this, but that his mom might hurt them
because you know, once your soul is a certain age.
I think it's like ten or twelve, you're now responsible
(34:38):
for going to heaven or hell. And a woman in
the group that he was in killed her children, and
he worried that that might be his fate. And I
have talked to several people who were just raised normal
Christian who kind of felt that way, like, maybe you
know before, I'm actually a sinner because this damnation thing
(34:59):
feels very real.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Something to save me? Yeah, oh wow. Interesting.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Yeah, speaking of putting all of your faith and belief
into a leader, you hit a point in your teenage
years where you did, in fact do that.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Can you tell us about that?
Speaker 4 (35:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (35:15):
And I think it's sort of apologies for time shifting
a little bit here. I think, you know, part of
what brought me to that place was a desire to be,
as we discussed, sort of like closer to my parents'
belief system and sort of fall in line with what
they wanted. But then also, you know, being in these
highly organized, kind of social, socially engineered environments where you're
(35:40):
in front of the grow and he's doing all this
stuff and looking at you a certain way, and you
feel like you know you've experienced something or not. But
you're not sure, but you know, there was a lot
of that. I remember I walked out of that first meditation,
they call it a darshan. I remember I exited the
room and the cole there hit me again because the
room was were controlled, very nice, everything was expensive, like
(36:04):
everything was decorated. He's on the top of this podium,
you know, or the point what do you call it,
like a diases like on sitting there way above you,
you know, and then the cold air hit me and
I just started crying and I just burst into tears
because I just felt like I didn't even know what
it was that I had just experienced. What did that mean?
What was it? And so I think I spent, you know,
(36:27):
increasingly the years from that point forward until we left
the group when I was about seventeen, both willing myself
to believe that what I saw wasn't the cigarette burn
but was the magical electric fire of divine healing. Yeah, yeah, right, So,
(36:50):
and I tried to articulate this, and I have over
the years tried to articulate this that there's like it
was like living in both of those worlds at the
same time between like okay, order for me to know
what he says he knows and I don't know. I
have to worship him as God, but like, is it
going to get there? But if I question it, is
it going to actually make it hard for me to
(37:12):
get there? Like I had to that part of the practice,
the quote unquote practice, was disabling the doubt that you
had about his spiritual ubiquity. So it was accepted and
cleverly positioned as something to both, you know, arrest yourself of,
(37:37):
but also something that you might feel because you can't
tell people they don't feel a certain way and have
them stick around. But you can be like, yeah, you
don't believe that I'm God, but that's normal. Keep believing
until you believe it. And so I, having been through that,
still feel like for many the people in that group,
(37:58):
who like person you saw on the internet like doggedly
believe that all these allegations are salacious ignorant. I feel
like those people must on some fundamental level live with
that doubt. There is no way as a human being
to live with that doubt because I do not believe
(38:18):
that he is God.
Speaker 4 (38:21):
And some people just go straight to their unconscious you know,
like they don't Yeah, I think they just unconsciously feel
that and they don't even know that they do.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
I don't know if you guys have encountered this with
other people you've talked to. But I find myself both
wanting to explain the bare bones of my experience with y'all,
but also to interrogate how it might happen, because there's
a pedestrian answer to that question, which is, yeah, I
believed it. I sat there, I worshiped him. I willed
(38:51):
myself into these experiences that I thought were like me
experiencing him. You were like you were literally told to
breathe and visualize him coming into your body. Oh wow, Yes,
that was from the top of your head. He came
down like a roller coaster, whow through the chakras or whatever,
and then down up the back of your spine.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
I don't get out of my body. I don't want
you in there.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
We're supposed to want him in there. So like, there's
a level of operationalizing, if you will, of the practice
of submitting yourself to this person that you could follow
almost by rote and not have to question the actual
mechanics of it. I don't think I've ever mentioned that
(39:34):
piece before publicly, and to see your reaction to it,
just like gave me the he Begb's right, because I'm like,
oh yeah, oh yeah, that is weird, you know, like
yeah shit, yeah, so yes, I think I believed it.
I practiced the the disciplines, but on some very deep level, unconscious,
(39:56):
maybe I felt like I was always questioning whether or
not this was something real.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
Yeah, like you would have the emotional experience of it,
but there's always a part of you that's like, was
that just was that manufacturer? Like part of you always
wonders that, yes, yeah, that is so interesting. I have
told the story a million times, so apologies to our listeners.
But when I believed in my cult leader, I was,
(40:25):
you know, praying, and I'm sure you've heard this as well.
I was praying to bear my testimony by myself, and
I got this, like I couldn't bring myself to finish
the sentence. I know that Blank is a true prophet,
and I like took note of it. I was like,
I'll just like think about that later. I just won't
worry about that right now. But like both things were
(40:46):
there simultaneously, Like I felt really wrapped up in this,
the excitement of being chosen you know, being I'm separated
from my mom, but it feels like which is really difficult.
But I'm like, okay, I'm suffering for a higher peris
and like it feels like I'm going to, you know,
in a movie, like I'm a fucking Han Solo or
(41:06):
something or sorry not Han Solo.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
The other one.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
I don't know anything about Star Wars Skywalker. He's like,
I'm Luke Skywalker.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Are they the same person? No?
Speaker 5 (41:17):
No, you guys, I know that I'm screaming in here.
Oh my god, hilarious.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Okay, not Star Wars people in this room.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
It's great, but you know, like, but at the same time,
I have this other thing that like coexists with it
at the same time, and I'm kind of doesn't.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Like we do answer this question typically like kind of
one or the other, depending on where it's most leaning
at that time.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
But the truth is, most of the time it's multiple things.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
We have multiple minds about it at the same time,
and part of it might just not be conscious yet
or as conscious. I think people who have not experienced
what the three of us have in some fashion.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Or the immortals yes, yes, or.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Who haven't you know, delved into the world of cult
survivors or whatever. Like we'll hear people like us talk
about cognitive dissonance and talk about how you know, on
some level we know. And I've heard people be like, well,
you know, though, so why don't you just leave because
you obviously know? And that that's the thing I kind
of just want to push back against, because like, even
(42:26):
when you have a feeling like you have all of
these other feelings that are so much bigger and gas lit, yes,
and you are being actively manipulated, you are surrounded by
people who believe the same thing. It's your community, it's
your identity, it's your life is being controlled. And so
even if part of you on some level might have
(42:47):
an inkling, you don't know that that inkling is real,
and your.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Top of that inkling is like, well, in my case,
the devil you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're exactly.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
You're given a framework for what that inkling means that
prevents you from actually recognizing it as critical thinking the
ego exactly, exactly, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Yeah, that's what you have to find. You have to
find that discomfort and find a way to let it go.
And I think even when you have like if you
believe this is a thing like a snapping moment, you know,
where you sort of like haven't about about what you believe,
or if it's more gradual whatever, the sort of process
of kind of disentangling yourself from the beliefs there is,
(43:32):
there's just a thread that will always be there, at
least for me. There's knowledge that you can you can
wander down a rabbit hole somewhere and end up with
a set of beliefs that you realize in that moment
you didn't want, but have no way of being able
to kind of really delineate how you got there.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Yeah, the leader doesn't even know.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Yeah, that's true, Which is which when I'm asked about
do I think that jos wanted this group to be
the way that it was, I don't think he did.
And he actually publicly said that he would say, only
the worst of men, only the worst of man and
cad come to me, you know, a web of talking
(44:15):
and he would say, like, only the worst of mankind
come to me. This idea that like his followers were
not shining citizens, which is its own. That's true, to
be clear, Like these people dedicated their lives the first time. Yeah,
and people endured this kind of harsh language from him.
(44:36):
We get into it.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
He was such a to them, yeah, and then so
loving and so fucked Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
And for our maybe our ninth or tenth conversation of
the between seven and forty one. You know, my dad
was in a way as aspired ultimately to be like him.
And I just wrote a book about him. He just
passed away this year, and I'm sorry, Yeah, I think
I mean it was both. It was both a very
(45:04):
sad moment, but he also had been struggling with dementia
for almost a decade, so you know, I think there
was some relief there too. But you know, my dad
was it was almost easier for me to acknowledge his
behavior as abusive, even though in many ways his behavior
was precisely the kind of behavior that people in the
(45:27):
group experienced, you know. But he wanted to be like him,
you know, wanted to have that authority, wanted to be
able to sort of pin somebody something Jones would do
start going all over the map. But something Jones would
do is like pick people out, like you would have
these like groups where people would ask questions, and sometimes
(45:50):
people would ask a question that seemed benign like you'd
watch it, you'd be like, this is legitimately no different
than the question that came before it from somebody else.
But he would like get in his head and he
would totally destroy that person.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
Just escapegoat them.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Just completely eviscerate them, like down to the bones of
who he said that they were. And that was supposed
to be a blessing. And people in the group will
tell you that, but they'll almost tell it to you sometimes,
some of them with a kind of like like in
an exulting way, the blessing of his fierce criticism.
Speaker 3 (46:25):
Oh my god, no, no, yeah, it's so acting classes
in LA, those like negative acting classes, and you see it.
Speaker 4 (46:34):
They escapegoat somebody that like somebody will ask a question
and somebody will do a scene and that scene was
just terrible, and you're like, what the fuck are you
talking about? Anyway, Yes, I haven't been to.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
Those Oh yeah, break you down to build you.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Up so ugly, ugly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
The problem with that whole notion, even if there's some
rationale behind it, which I don't think that there is,
but the problem with that notion is there is a
vacuum that appears when one person and submits their own
agency to another that is filled by the person who's
saying they're helping you become something better. Right then just
(47:10):
gobbles it up. It's like insatiable, you know, need to
have that sense, you know, that bigger sense of who
they are or whatever they think that they're doing. I mean,
I'm just psychoanalyzing Jones now, but like, yeah, yeah, I
mean I have always found it difficult to answer those
kinds of questions directly. And I think I'm okay with
(47:33):
living in a territory of thinking as a human being
on this planet for as long as I'm here, which
is forever.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
I was like, is he about to forget forever?
Speaker 1 (47:46):
I'm comfortable with living with the idea that I could
have and can, at any moment wander into somebody else's
coercive story and lose myself. Not that I will, not
that that's very likely given everything that I've been through
and what I do with my life on a daily basis,
(48:07):
but it's possible.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
That's it gives you the resilience to be wrong, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Right, because part of this is the idea that you
aren't ever wrong.
Speaker 4 (48:17):
Right.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
The whole reason I did dear Franklin Jones was I
wanted my parents to understand, just for a moment that
this linear trajectory they thought that we were on towards
spiritual fulfillment. That they would literally say to me that
they were like freeing themselves of all these karmic attachments
to ego and to like lives that they had passed
(48:40):
lives they lived all this stuff about like that was
supposed to be reaching towards their spiritual enlightenment, their freedom,
their absorption into Jones that because they were doing that work,
somehow this was like a genetic inheritance for me and
that I was going to get it and be better off,
Which is a little bit puzzling if you think that
you live multiple lives too, Like which life is? Does
it like reset in the next one? Do I carry
(49:02):
it over?
Speaker 2 (49:03):
Like is it a death?
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Wow, it's convoluted. But they believed in some way there
was a trajectory that we were on together and that
it was going to be you know, that this was better.
And I think for me, I just wanted them to
acknowledge the possibility that maybe we went down like maybe
on a little bit of a wout chase there, and
(49:28):
that like you can make mistakes in life and still
be on the path. They wanted to believe so much
that there were no side channels that they went off on,
that they didn't make any mistakes and this was all
grist for the mill, and I don't believe that it was.
(49:48):
That's all I wanted them to do was acknowledge that
it was possible we made a mistake somewhere along line,
even if it was just Hey, things were pretty good
until the nineties and then it got a little weird
and we ducked. Yeah, but it wasn't possible for them,
and my dad and I were estranged from each other
after the podcast came out for that exact reason. And frankly,
(50:09):
I don't and I'll say this, I don't care, like
I don't think my mom and I were ever the
same after this either.
Speaker 4 (50:16):
Really really, I mean, I am so impressed with this podcast.
Like people do not talk to their parents how you
talk to your parents, I mean, and I don't mean
that you're being disrespectful at all, No, No, you really
just say, hey, here's what happened, and some of it's
so vast like uncomfortable, and you sat with that in
(50:37):
a way that I am not able to do well.
Speaker 1 (50:40):
I appreciate you saying that. I don't think my parents
were able to sit with it in a way that
they could embrace, despite the fact that I think they
would want, both of them individually to believe that they
were the most open minded, the most trupressive, the most
forward thinking people out there, and yet they couldn't acknowledge
(51:02):
in their own son a sense that this maybe wasn't
all wine and roses for him, right, And I think
to your point that ability to acknowledge mistake is so
important to not falling prey to a high control environment,
(51:23):
because the high control environment establishes an objective truth, squishy
and elusive as it might be, that you need to
aspire towards enlightenment, salvation, whatever it is, and you can't
ever question that you're questioning is the process of getting there.
(51:47):
And yet mistakes changing, you know, courses in life, pivoting, restarting,
like that's what makes us better, that's what makes us whole,
that's what makes us human.
Speaker 3 (52:00):
Right, and not restarting because God decided we should. But right, yeah,
because oh maybe that was wrong with the book.
Speaker 1 (52:07):
They were just doing hoops, Okay, Yeah, let me redo that.
I mean, yeah, I think that's our humanity. I think
as a dad. I've got two boys now, one who's
seven and one who is like twenty one months, and
I think about the little dude. If I operated from
the point of view that he needed to live in
(52:30):
a world where he never made mistakes, how dangerous that
would be when he was like belly flopping on a
chair earlier today and like tipping over to the side.
If I didn't believe that, it was like if I
caught him and maybe he hurt himself, and like he
needed to be comforted, but then reminded that, like maybe
he shouldn't sit on that chair. Like isn't that like
(52:52):
the nature of parenting. You grow up, you get older,
your kids make mistakes, like somebody you know, I don't know,
Heaven forbid, like crashes a car, or like it's a
bad grade on a test. If I was like living
in some world where mistakes were not an option, I
would be fighting against the nature of reality.
Speaker 2 (53:09):
But so many people do, yes, so many, I mean
so many people in the political sphere.
Speaker 3 (53:15):
That's like their entire em oh, the way that they operate,
even even in relationships.
Speaker 2 (53:21):
I find it difficult. It's difficult to find people who
can acknowledge that.
Speaker 3 (53:24):
I mean, it's and I've struggled with acknowledging that I
still do. You know, like it's one of the hardest
things I think as a human to be able to
have that humility and say I was wrong, I hurt someone, right,
and I'm gonna do better, right.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
And I think like on the twelve Steps we are
like really covering everything.
Speaker 4 (53:43):
But you know, like like one of the goals of
it is that you do say I made a mistake,
I was wrong here, and you realize like, oh I
didn't die.
Speaker 2 (53:52):
Yes, that wasn't that big of a deal.
Speaker 4 (53:54):
It's like doing it is so much harder than experiencing
it after So I don't.
Speaker 3 (53:59):
Know, basically, we all should just get better as saying
we were wrong sometimes apologizing and it's really not that
big of a deal.
Speaker 2 (54:08):
It's like fine, Yes.
Speaker 1 (54:09):
It is completely fine to make mistakes and to move
on with your life and to like find a way
to be somebody else than what you were a moment earlier.
And I think that's a beautiful Yeah, it's a beautiful
part of life. But it's such a beautiful dream too.
That like there is some other side, you know, that
(54:32):
where everything is perfect, where you are perfect, where you
don't die.
Speaker 4 (54:38):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah all in the dream.
Speaker 3 (54:42):
Yeah wow, well we should we should wrap up suits.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
I was like, I just looked at my watch.
Speaker 2 (54:49):
I know, I know.
Speaker 3 (54:53):
I mean, briefly, how did you come to leave? How
did you your family come to leave? How did you
come to leave?
Speaker 1 (55:01):
So funny, We're just getting to this now, so much
to cover. But there was another acupuncturist in the picture.
Speaker 2 (55:08):
Oh he was cheating.
Speaker 1 (55:09):
He was cheating on my parents with another acupuncturist, or
they were disinvited from their regular appointment as his acupuncturists.
And I think they believed he'd had to do with
the fact that he was seeing another acupuncturist. They believed
he was having like a sexual relationship with that person.
I don't actually know. I cannot remember whether or not
(55:32):
she denied that fact, or whether or not she spoke
about it.
Speaker 2 (55:37):
Your dad was like, I know my unlicensed acupuncture.
Speaker 1 (55:43):
I may not have gone to acupuncture school, but I
know my guns. You cheated. No, But I think they
they felt she had sort of inter intervened on their
unique relationship with Jones, and they were kind of like
spun out from there and my dad lost it. Definitely
was not happy. He was convinced at that point that
(56:03):
Jones was a bad person, like funny, that that was
what sent him over the edge. But at one point
he was going to write his own scathing memoir about
being in the group. He was going to call it
Vampires Kiss. Yes, feels like a maybe an Anne Rice novel,
but I need some workshopping Vampires Kiss. Maybe it was
(56:27):
Kiss of the Vietnam No, that is it, Anne Rice.
So he was quite upset. He wanted to leave, and
I didn't want to go. I didn't want to leave.
I was still wedded to this group at this point.
I had built my whole life around it. I had
left high school, I was homeschooled, living in northern California,
(56:49):
part of the group. I didn't want to leave. I
used to hide a picture of Jones in my room
for my parents because I didn't want them to see
that I still had it up. Wow, those last months
year before it just kind of like everything just sort
of and then there was just a long, a long
(57:09):
period of almost like recovering, like we had just come
down from this thing. I don't even know if I
was completely out of it yet, you know what I mean.
I just felt like I was in this ugh state
for quite some time. But my dad was the one
who wanted to leave, and my mom of course did
whatever he wanted to do. And then, you know, eventually
I came to I probably a far more pointed conclusion
(57:33):
about Jones than he did in the end, because till
the day my dad died, he believed that Jones was
He even says it in the series. He's like, you know,
you can be enlightened and still be an asshole. Was
his belief Jones could be all these things. A manipulator,
you know, chee puncture, yeah, yeah, acupuncture of course.
Speaker 2 (57:55):
Because that's making you grow such part of it.
Speaker 1 (57:58):
Yeah, So he believed that that was like almost part
of it, part of the group, part of the you know,
part of this tradition of spiritual teachers who challenge you know,
in Buddhism and Hinduism and called them like crazy whise teachers.
Speaker 2 (58:12):
Why why why did they leave all together?
Speaker 3 (58:15):
Instead of just accepting that they were run of the
mill members.
Speaker 1 (58:19):
I think he must have had his own kind of
snapping moment. Yeah, just probably hurt a lot. Yeah, and
he did want to be his own mini Jones, you know,
so like he would host these meditations on Sundays. Oh really, yeah,
my dad would after that.
Speaker 2 (58:35):
Interesting so never formed.
Speaker 1 (58:38):
Yeah, no, it didn't stick with him.
Speaker 4 (58:40):
And less charismatic with Jones either, Like at the end
of his life, he was like, we don't have enough people.
Why is this only reaching a thousand people? And if
you are enlightened, like I don't.
Speaker 2 (58:50):
Like, it's oh your fault. You guys did a bad job.
Speaker 4 (58:53):
You know.
Speaker 1 (58:53):
There were seven stages of life in Jones's like, oh
group in his philosophy, as far as I know, nobody
made it past one point two holy shit, So you'd
be like, you'd get like level.
Speaker 2 (59:06):
One so scientilgalogy.
Speaker 1 (59:08):
Yeah, and he did dabble in that before stars.
Speaker 4 (59:12):
Yes, well, thank you for covering every corner of cults
with us my life and I've learned a lot today.
Speaker 1 (59:24):
Oh my god, it's been such a pleasure. I'm so
grateful to have a chance to meet you guys and
talk about all this stuff.
Speaker 3 (59:31):
And you know where you have so many projects? Yes,
what are you doing right now?
Speaker 1 (59:37):
Well, I continue to make documentary series. I head up
something for Sony's podcast division called The Binge, which is
like true crime docs. I produce some of them. I
helped to edit and executive produce the other ones. So yeah,
I mean people can find me anywhere Instagram. Maybe I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (59:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (59:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (59:58):
And the podcast that we've been referring to throughout this
episode was called Dear Franklin Jones. Yes, and you also
wrote a book that I feel you should mention.
Speaker 1 (01:00:06):
Yes, I should mention the book. Thank you. I wrote
a book for Simon and Schuster that came out this
year called The Mind Is Burning Losing my father to
a cult and dementia, and it sort of, I think,
picks up where Dear Franklin Jones leaves off and digs
into my life with my dad after I did the series,
(01:00:28):
backtrack a little bit and talk about my childhood too,
but mostly through the lens of my relationship to him,
because we were effectively estranged after Dear Franklin Jones came
out and then he got sick with dementia, and that
began the many years long journey towards you know, illness
(01:00:49):
and ultimately death, which I will not myself be incurring. Yes,
I had to get one last let us. But yeah,
the mind is Burning is the name of the of
the book.
Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
Thank you so much for joining us, and we're coming
into this duty.
Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
Oh my god, my pleasure. This has been the most
delightful and enjoyable conversation about cults that I have ever had.
Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
So good.
Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
Thank you, thank you, thank you, really really fun.
Speaker 4 (01:01:22):
All right, that concludes the second part of our interview
with Jonathan, and today, Lola, we're going to do something
a little out of the ordinary. I'm going to ask
you you yourself, would.
Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
You join this cult?
Speaker 3 (01:01:37):
I mean, I don't think this will be a surprise
to anyone, but probably not.
Speaker 4 (01:01:40):
Now.
Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
I mean, okay, here's what I like.
Speaker 3 (01:01:44):
I do like the meditation aspect, and I do like ritual.
Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
I do like those things.
Speaker 4 (01:01:52):
They would just need to call it like mindfulness and discipline, Yes.
Speaker 3 (01:01:57):
Exactly, improved improve yourself. Yeah, and like I gotta say, like,
I find his face so compelling that I feel you're
speaking of the leader, of course, Yes, the leader, ADDI
da Franklin Jones, not Jonathan harsh although I love Jonathan Harshay. Yes,
I mean, you're obsessed with this man's face, it's just
so like I think as a director, I'm like, you know,
(01:02:20):
like some faces are just so interesting and you like
want them as a character actor or whatever.
Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
Like that's kind of how I feel.
Speaker 3 (01:02:26):
I'm like, I want to cast this man posthumously and
like have him play a weirdo in a movie. Like
I just find his face very interesting. But I don't
think ultimately that new age groups are my kind of groups.
Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
Well that's fine, leave them all for me.
Speaker 4 (01:02:42):
Mark, Okay, so greedy, Thanks for listening to us another
week you guys. As always, remember to rate us five
stars and remember to grab some trust Me merch at
exactly rightstore dot com. And as always, remember to follow
your gut, watch out for red flags.
Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
And never ever trust me. Bye.
Speaker 3 (01:03:09):
This has been an Exactly Right production hosted by me
Lola Blanc and.
Speaker 4 (01:03:13):
Me Megan Elizabeth. Our senior producer is g.
Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
Holly. This episode was mixed by John Bradley.
Speaker 4 (01:03:19):
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain, and our guest booker
is Patrick Kottner.
Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
Our theme song was composed by Holly Ambert Church.
Speaker 4 (01:03:26):
Trust Me as executive produced by Karen Kilgareth Georgia Hartstark
and Danielle Kramer.
Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
You can find us on Instagram at trust Me Podcast
or on TikTok at trust Me Cult Podcast.
Speaker 4 (01:03:36):
Got your own story about cults, extreme belief our, manipulation,
Shoot us an email at trustmepod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3 (01:03:43):
Listen to trust Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts
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